


Cousin

by EclipseWing



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Gen, Harry is born a Gaunt, I'm still imagining Lily as his mother but he's a Potter and Gaunt by blood, One-Shot, Slytherin Harry, Tom is not impressed, both house and blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 07:54:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17484167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EclipseWing/pseuds/EclipseWing
Summary: The boy grows more confident, smirk curling at his lips, “You don’t recognise me, cousin?” he sticks out his hand, “Hadrian Gaunt,” he introduces himself, “It’s always nice to find long-lost family, am I right?”It’s only then that Tom realises the whole common room is staring at them, and it takes him too long to realise the reason why is because the whole conversation between the two of them hadn’t been in English.It had been in Parseltongue.





	Cousin

**Author's Note:**

> That one scene of Harry talking to Tom in parseltongue following Tom's murder and framing of his family just struck me and I had to write it. I don't know where this would go though, so it's going to stay as a one-shot for now.

Sixth year starts well. A new ring on his finger, his followers lazily lounging around him as he sits in the best seat of the common room, Tom Riddle observes his small but definite kingdom.

And oh, it was most definitely his. Some might not know it, or refuse to acknowledge it, but he ruled Slytherin. They could argue, they could hammer out the points, but he remembers their awed stares and silence following the Chamber incident last year.

His lips curl, content. Slytherin’s heir. Such a title; it is only right that it belongs to him. Unquestionably and irrevocably.

Avery had his head stuck in a book while Lestrange and Macnair are making critical appraisals of the new lot of first years, newly sorted. Tom hadn’t cared much for the sorting; he hardly wanted to have to deal with a bunch of eleven year olds. He’d zoned out about ten minutes ago and is brought back into conversation by his name being said several times.

“There’s a new boy,” Lestrange says, “Did they tell you about him in the prefect meeting, Tom?”

“In case you weren’t aware,” Tom drawls, “We get new students every year in September.”

Lestrange flushes, “I know that, I mean… there’s a new third year. A-a transfer…” he blinks, “I didn’t think Hogwarts took transfers, he must be either very important or very wealthy.”

“Or maybe neither,” Dolohov sneers, “Look at his clothes, he looks like he’s been raiding the second-hand shops.” His smirk stutters and he glances at Tom, “No offence,” he adds, eyes widening at his slight.

Tom’s smile is thin, “None taken,” he enunces perfectly, enjoying Dolohov’s audible gulp. He turns to look at the boy in question. A third year, he’s talking to Orion Black, and Dolohov is right. He looks a state. His robes are threadbare, clearly the cheapest he could find and many-times used. His hair looks like he’s been out in the wind, swept every which way and he’s fidgeting nervously with his tie which looks like he has tried to force it into the right knot without actually knowing what he’s doing.

But there is…  _ something _ … about him, that Tom can’t put his finger on. Maybe it’s in the way he holds himself, or maybe it’s the way his head cocks to the side; bright and inquisitive. He doesn’t look up at anyone. Even to those taller his head tilts in a way that the taller person angles themselves to look to him instead of the other way around.

That is, naturally, when Orion whispers something to him and the new boy turns to look straight at him. His eyes are a vivid green, Tom realises, even from this distance, and there’s a fire in them, a stubborn prideful fire that makes him want to sit up and take interest.

He turns away, in clear dismissal, thumb curling contentedly over the ring that sits on his finger. He has no need of stupid third years, he has bigger things to worry about. “So is it true the girl they found in the bathroom turned into a ghost?” he asks, tone casual, “How _ do  _ ghosts form? I wouldn’t have thought she’d have the power.”

Avery looks up from his book, “Hard to say,” he says, “I hear no ghost has ever admitted how it happened.”

“I mean; it can’t be a ritual,” he reasons, “Binns still genuinely doesn’t know he’s dead.”

“Tom?”

He turns his attention to Dolohov who is frowning. “You know?” he asks.

Dolohov has clearly not been listening, “No, Tom, that boy - he’s heading over here.”

“He’s--” Tom turns to see the dark haired boy is indeed picking his way across the common room towards Tom, still walking with that confidence that reminds Tom of a large predator. The boy doesn’t stop until he’s standing in front of them, green eyes still oddly fixed on Tom, “Can I help you?” he asks, tone polite but clipped, clearly unwelcoming but the boy doesn’t react.

The boy opens his mouth and then closes it. Up close he doesn’t look as impressive; kind of scrawny and there’s a healing bruise on his jaw. In the background Orion Black is making frantic gestures to the boy that go unseen.

“Well?” Dolohov says, irritably, “What’s the matter, mudblood? Snake got your tongue?”

Irritation passes over the boy’s face, eyes narrowing and he seems to make up his mind, “Tom Riddle,” the boy says, staring at Tom, “Has anybody ever told you that you look just like your father? Except you have your mother’s eyes.”

Tom straightens in his seat, “ _ Excuse _ me?” he asks, outrage and fury sparking like a lit match over gasoline at the words because how does this  _ no-name child _ even have a  _ clue _ about Tom’s family. Tom  _ himself _ hadn’t known until recently, and now this  _ boy--  _ “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The boy grows more confident, smirk curling at his lips, “You don’t recognise me, cousin?” he sticks out his hand, “Hadrian Gaunt,” he introduces himself, “It’s always nice to find long-lost family, am I right?”

It’s only then that Tom realises the whole common room is staring at them, and it takes him too long to realise the reason why is because the whole conversation between the two of them hadn’t been in English.

It had been in Parseltongue.

*

Harry’s mother dies when he is nine.

Or, more accurately, his father murders his mother when he is nine.

His mother is a Potter, and she would probably have raised Harry as a Potter had she not lost contact after they’d disowned her. The half-sister of Charlus Potter; the daughter of a pureblood and a muggle - she disappears the way all shameful pureblood secrets do: they stop talking about her until she’s a faded memory in their minds.

He has the dark messy Potter hair and his mother’s eyes and just the subtle curve of his father’s jaw and that glint in his eyes that speaks of Slytherin madness. She raises him with love and kindness; barely managing to keep herself and her son alive and healthy. She raises him as if he were a Potter, as she herself had been raised and there’s no need to know about his father. He knows the basics; a pureblood with delusions of blood purity. She had told him tales as a child; about how she had felt sorry for him when she had encountered him. He had been injured and ill and she had helped him because she was kind.

She had always been so kind. It had been her downfall, her weakness, and Harry knows he has inherited that kindness when he tried to rescue the snakes pinned to the door only to be forced to watch as their bones are snapped cruelly in front of him.

She had been kind and it had gotten her killed. So Harry resolves to treat kindness as a luxury one must earn.

The next snake pinned to the door he watches die slowly and painfully.

He’s not sure what happened between his mother’s mistake of kindness and her fleeing to live, scrounging job for job and looking after her son. She has a little wealth from her family before she left and it’s enough that between that and her working they survive. Harry is pureblood, a wizard, and one day he will go to the same school his mother went to and he will learn magic and he will make it so that his mother never has to work again.

It doesn’t, of course, work that way. He is nine when Morfin finds them. When she dies and Morfin drags him away from where the house is burning behind him, Harry’s screams still caught in his throat.

Harry had learned how to hold his head up high from his mother. He knows the importance of confidence and pride and doesn’t know how important the lessons will be in his future. Now he holds his head up high when he meets his father, refusing to cry, refusing to be cowed. Even when Morfin strikes him down he stands again, chin jutting out almost defiantly, “Wha’s your name,  _ boy _ ?”

“Harry,” he says, “And I’m  _ not a boy _ , I’m nine!”

“Least ya’ speak proper,” his father sniffs, “‘Adrian. Ya’ name, ‘s ‘Adrian. Better than a filthy common muggle name.”

“For the Emperor?” Harry asks, tilting his head.

“Sure,” his father doesn’t appear to care, “Won’ have me heir wiv a filthy muggle name.”

His home is burning behind him, and that is the moment Harry decides that Morfin Gaunt does not deserve to be called a father.

*

The man is foul. The poverty stricken house is fouler, but it is home. Harry knows what will happen to him on the streets. Morfin values him. Harry -  _ Hadrian _ \- is his heir. The man is mad, touched in the head save for a few rare moments of clarity.

He’d had a sister. But she’d run off after love potion-ing a muggle. Harry wonders if that particular habit runs in the family, thinks it must have, thinks this is why his mother had run.  _ Merope _ had been her name, and she’d been ugly in the one picture he found. Her eyes were looking the wrong way and her jaw was too large for her face. The muggle she had run off with had returned - he lived on the hill across from them. Harry had seen him from time to time; the man handsome and rich. Morfin had gotten into trouble before from baiting him - it’s not an awful surprise when he does again.

Harry is thirteen, his age still new enough that he has to take the moment to remember he has just had his birthday. He spends it alone, reading stolen books and practising magic with his wand and imagining he was at Hogwarts. His mother had told him stories; grand tales spun of the great castle. He had hoped to go there when he turned eleven but Morfin had forbidden him - written back with a clear ‘no’ and a threat.

Anger flashes, cold and furious and he entertains himself with how he will get out from under his father’s hand. Plotting Morfin’s inevitable death he doesn’t return back to the ratty Gaunt shack until later that day.

He returns to aurors and his father in chains.

“Excuse me?” he asks, because he may have spent the last three years in a hovel, but he had been raised a Potter, “Sir, where are you taking my father?”

The red-robed auror pales, “Oh sweet Merlin, you  _ live _ here.”

Morfin spots him then, face twisting in fury, “‘Adrian, ‘e stole the ring!” spittle flies everywhere from his mouth. Harry flinches, and the auror he had been talking to lays a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “The ring!” Morfin insists, “Riddle stole it! Merope’s  _ spawn _ ! That filthy fuckin’ mudblood, stole Marvolo’s ring ‘e, I’ll gut ‘im, gut ‘im for me, GUT ‘IM, ‘ADRIAN!””

“Poor blighter’s mad,” someone shakes their head sadly as the man is dragged away. Harry watches silently, partially gleeful, oddly disconnected because he had hoped Morfin would be killed or imprisoned  _ he’d never actually expected it to happen _ .

He’s angry. He has been planning his revenge against Morfin for  _ years _ and now it has been taken away from him. “What’s he being arrested for?” he turns big green eyes on one of the aurors who starts to herd him away, “Did he hurt someone again? He… I know he’s not right in the head.”

The auror who has a hand on his shoulder turns Harry away from where Morfin is being dragged away. He crouches in front of Harry with a soft, gentle smile on his face, “He your father? What’s your name?”

“Hadrian Gaunt,” he answers, biting his lip and playing up the wide-eyed innocent look that used to get him out of trouble as a child, “But my mum used to call me Harry.”

“Okay, Harry,” the auror smiles, “Your father’s being arrested because he’s being suspected of murder. He’s not denying it either so… it’s not looking good.”

“Murder?” Harry asks, with wide eyes, “Who…”

“Some muggles, lived in a big house on the hill,” the auror says, and the pieces slot into place.

“The Riddles?”

“Aye, that’s right. Keeps going on about them stealing his ring.”

Marvolo’s ring, Harry thinks, the Gaunt ring, the  _ Peverell _ ring, the ring that is his by right, the only thing he deserves from his no-good father, “It’s gone? Did he… did you find it? He said Riddle stole it...”

“No,” the auror busies himself with conjuring a blanket over his shoulders, “No, we didn’t, just three bodies. Signs of the killing curse on all of them, I’m so sorry, his wand signature matches the spell cast. Come on, I’ll take you to the Ministry and we’ll see what we can do about finding your family - your mother must have had relatives… right?”

Riddle stole it, Morfin had spat, except no, that’s not quite right.

_ Merope’s spawn _ , he had said. His aunt, the ugly woman who had run away with the muggle Riddle using a love potion. There is a missing ring and his father is being arrested for killing muggles using what could only have been the killing curse.

Oh, this boy is good. He’s covered his tracks nearly perfectly, wiped out the Riddles and the Gaunts in one swift move.

Except he clearly didn’t know about Harry.

“Come on,” the auror steers him over to a portkey, “Do you go to Hogwarts?”

“No, my father wouldn’t let me, but… my mother went. I’d always wanted to go… if I still could…”

“You’re a good kid, tell you what, I’ll speak to a few people. Gaunt, right? Name holds weight even if the family isn’t much… I’ll see what I can do--”

Harry hides his smile in the blanket. Perfect, he thinks, maybe he should thank this ‘Riddle’ for all he’s unintentionally done for him. Right after he’s stolen his ring back, of course.

Right now he has a cousin to hunt down.

*

The boy is not a pureblood, but his blood is purer than Tom's.

His mother was a Potter.

Lillian Potter is the daughter of a pureblood Potter and a muggle. She is still part of the family - muggle-loving blood traitors that they are - but so far disconnected from the main line that her child had no connections to the family beyond his mother. Charlus Potter had apparently been oddly curious to discover his sister had a son.

Tom  _ hates him _ instantly.

Had it not been for the parseltongue he would not have looked at the boy twice, nor even considered his words to be truth. And the child has the  _ gall _ to stand there, snarling hisses falling off his tongue and Tom can practically feel the common room around him reorganise their views and perspectives.

For the first time in  _ centuries _ there is not one, but two Slytherin heirs walking Hogwarts’ corridors. Tom still holds sway in the house through fear and power; the boy, though powerful, is not trained. He’s too well-spoken, too assessing, he clearly grew up with the mother although there’s a rough edge and he speaks parseltongue like he’s used to holding full conversations in it.

He curses because for all his research none of it had suggested,  _ hinted _ that Morfin Gaunt had a son. Tom might be older, but Hadrian holds the Gaunt name. One of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. The name might be trash and mud but this green-eyed pretty-faced  _ boy _ ’s mere  _ existence _ threatens to topple his growing empire. And that’s without the way the child is already making waves in the social circles of the thirds years from all houses.

He will have to be dealt with. And soon.

He corners the boy after a week of classes, shoving him into an empty classroom and enjoying the way the scrawny child stumbles with a noise of surprise. Hadrian - Harry, he’s heard Orion call the boy, how  _ common _ \- straightens and turns, lips kicked up into a smile and he’s not surprised, Tom realises, he’s  _ laughing _ .

“Cousin,” he greets, sounding far too content about this whole affair. He even uses their relationship like a friendly moniker, practically belittling Tom with that accursed word. He’s so smugly confident that Tom wants to wipe the smirk of his face. He wants to sink his fist into those pretty features. His hands curl. This rage is new, unfamiliar. He knows anger, is intimately familiar with it, but to experience it so strongly so quickly with someone he barely knows...

“I’m sorry we haven’t had the chance to meet before,” Tom says, starting off charming with a cruel bite, “I wasn’t aware I had any cousins.”

Harry’s smile is slightly fixed, but he still looks amused, “Yeah, well, my father and your mother lost contact. Ran off with a muggle, didn't she?" he tilts his head to one side, almost innocently as he eyes up Tom standing there, “Guess the Gaunts have a thing for love potions, huh?”

The words are another cruel barb.  _ Love potion _ , Tom stares, because that’s not what happened, his father had  _ left _ , that’s not--

That makes too much sense and he doesn’t want to think on that now, instead narrowing his eyes at Harry, “I just wanted to say,” he says, “If you need any help with your schoolwork or anything at all, I’m happy to assist you. I’m aware that Morfin didn’t allow you to attend Hogwarts before now.”

Another kind phrase with barbed undertones.

“Yes, well,” the boy says, glibly, “I have you to thank, don’t I?”

Tom stills, “What?” he asks, but it comes out in hissed parseltongue instead of English.

Harry looks amused, “Don’t worry,” he croons, almost reassuringly, “I won’t tell anyone.”

Ice creeps through his veins, burning with anger, “Tell  _ what _ ?” he asks, trying to look wide-eyed and innocent but a tad too tense to pull it off.

The boy snorts, “I’m not stupid,” he says, "Got my brains from my mother, thank Merlin. I know you killed your father and framed my father for it."

And oh, Tom had made a mistake for seeing him as a Potter only, he can see the Gaunt features shine through as he throws out his piece of blackmail like some writhing creature lying dead between them. He allows his shoulders to relax, for his lips to curl in an emotionless smile, “Prove it,” he challenges, unbothered, “It’s a pitiful, baseless accusation at best--”

Harry interrupts, grin sly, “Maybe, were you not wearing our grandfather's ring.” He waits a beat, two, watches Tom’s mind racing to try and play this game of chess. He’s grown lazy - nobody at Hogwarts even begins to challenge him and this  _ boy _ has the audacity to  _ threaten him _ . “But like I said,” he adds, lightly, after letting Tom stew for a moment or two, “You got Morfin out of the way. I had rather hoped to kill him myself but I suppose alternatives can be arranged. I guess I owe you thanks, cousin."

The ugly black stone ring is heavy on his finger as he fiddles with it, the imperfection faceted in the stone catching the light, “You’re most welcome,” he purrs, no longer eyeing up the boy as an innocent, instead seeing the other predator standing before him, “Did you want this?” he asks, “To remember your wonderful father by? I’m sure Morfin was a great influence--”

And there, just a subtle flinch, green eyes going steely mercury with bitterness and anger, “It’s okay,” Harry says back, words sickly sweet, “You deserve something to tie you back to our family. Since, y’know, you’ve got nothing else.”

Oh, they’re playing like that, are they? “Like I said,” Tom says, “If you need any help with your schooling, let me know.”

“Of course,  _ cousin _ . It’s wonderful to be here in the halls our ancestor built. I do hope we can get to know each other, I’ve heard a lot about you.”

"I'm sure you will settle right in," Tom's own smile is just as fake, as Harry sidesteps past him. He can barely hold back his desire to reach out, to claw at the other boy, to  _ make him bleed _ .

"I'll see you around, cousin,” Harry throws over his shoulder, and Tom's fist curls tighter, nails curling into his palm, trying to hide his fury.

Other plans can wait, he decides, right now he wants to make his baby cousin’s life  _ hell _ .

His last two years at Hogwarts may prove to be more interesting than first anticipated.


End file.
